Happy Anniversary Viagra. But You Still Can't Fix Everything!

Will this magic blue pill help your sex life? A Boston sex therapist muses about whether it might.

by Aline P. Zoldbrod Ph.D. (EXPERT)

March 2013 is the fifteeth anniversary of Viagra becoming available (on the 27th of March, to be exact). In a lot of ways, Viagra’s invention merits a celebration. Erectile dysfunction is quite common--more common as men age, but not rare in younger men. Men with E.D. are miserable. If they are married, they are insecure and defensive, avoid sex, get depressed; sometimes their feelings come out as anger toward their partner. If they are single, they are terrified of dating. If they are divorced and newly dating, they can develop erectile instability even though they previously had no sexual problems. Viagra really helps!

Both older and newer research has found that in men with E.D., Viagra use helps erections, and it also helps self esteem, depression levels, and general lovingness towards the partner. A recent study has again found that the sexual satisfaction of both the male and the female partner of a male with erectile dysfunction improved significantly when the man took Viagra.

I remember when Viagra first came out in 1998, and a lot of we sex therapists were worried –worried that a lot of deep seated sexual problems would be swept under the rug, that this “quick fix” would turn out to be a ruse or would turn out badly. I used to worry that Viagra would encourage men who had had to develop a more tender, female-centric mode of loving to get deeper into a phallocentric model of sex as penetration, with relaxed sensual touching kicked onto the floor with the rest of the extra blankets.

I still worry now about Viagra. About its being treated as a party drug by younger men, about Pfizer promoting it as a life-enhancement drug for men who have no physical or psychological E.D. whatsoever, and about how it creates the experience of an extra-hard penis that is hard to obtain in normal life by any man older than 25. (Creating a market for it among the entire universe of men aged 26 to death….)

But I have to admit, a lot of sex therapists’ fears about Viagra turned out to be unnecessary. For the lucky couples for whom Viagra works well and consistently—the ones with partners who are very interested in sex, if anything, Viagra has improved the quality of the lovemaking. Penises’ hardness waxes and wanes, naturally. When a man is fearful of losing his erection, this can bring on intense performance anxiety, leading him to rush to intercourse, curtailing he and his partner’s pleasure in the touches, sights, and sounds of lovemaking. Viagra often takes away the insecurity, so the entire sexual experience is richer and more varied.